Joseph Schreiner: Author and Columnist

United States Fractures into Urban and Rural Countries, Part 1

Harvest Moon, 26 September 2026

The topic for the next two moons is how the United States might fracture into two or more countries, based on ideological differences. This moon, I discuss historical and contemporary examples. Next moon, I discuss how this fracturing might come about.

The vexing, and possibly unique, aspect of a fractured United States is that current ideological polarization is not based on geographic region, as it was during the War of Southern Secession. Ideological polarization is currently urban vs. rural, and, to an increasing extent, female vs. male.

So if the United States were to fracture due to ideological differences, what would we be looking at? We would be looking at an archipelago of large cities (leftist) embedded within a rural expanse (rightist). Is there any historical precedent for such an odd configuration?

First, let us consider some contemporary examples of independent city-states. These include Singapore (vs. Malaysia), Monaco (vs. France), and the Vatican City (vs. Italy). These examples are instructive but incomplete. In each of these three cases, we have a single city in a symbiotic relationship with a country or country-side. This is not quite the archipelago-expanse configuration resulting from ideological polarization.

We can look further back in history for examples of alliances of multiple cities. In ancient times, we have the Greek city-states such as Athens and Sparta. The Middle Ages had the Free Hanseatic Cities, of which Hamburg and Bremen remain sovereign federal states in Germany, and Lübeck has been incorporated into the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein. The Renaissance era saw the rise of the Italian merchant republics, among them Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, and Venice.

These are better analogies, but they still do not quite embody what we are looking for. In reality, the cities in these examples were often in a competitive, rather than cooperative, relationship. Athens and Sparta went to war against each other. The Hanseatic and Italian cities were commercial competitors. We are envisioning a situation where the component cities consider themselves part of a greater cooperative political unit.

Two examples from the 21st century are more instructive, as they better illustrate a strained, or even hostile relationship. Two of these examples are currently in force, the first being Kaliningrad Oblast. Kaliningrad Oblast is the westernmost federal subject of the Russian Federation. Kaliningrad Oblast does not share a border with the rest of the Russian Federation. The three Baltic states of Lithuania, Lativa, and Estonia broke away from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. But Kaliningrad Oblast did not. Kaliningrad Oblast maintain contact with the Russian Federation primarily through sea and air corridors. A strictly controlled rail line also passes through Lithuania.

Perhaps an even better current example is South Africa, which contains urban enclaves, such as the Whites-only town of Orania in the Northern Cape and various gated communities and Business Improvement Districts. The Black-dominated South African government is unable to provide basic services, so private businesses and residents acquire such services via payments to non-profit organizations.

Two other 20th century instances of discontinuous territories come to mind, both involving Germany. The Treaty of Versailles, after World War I, created the Polish Corridor, which, in giving Poland access to the Baltic Sea, severed the German city of Danzig from the remainder of Germany. This separation was a source of friction leading to the German invasion of Poland. An even more notorious example was the city of West Berlin in the heart of East Germany. After World War II, the four Allied powers carved up the county of Germany into four zones of occupation and the city of Berlin itself into four zones of occupation. When the relationship between the Soviet Union and the three Western powers deteriorated, the Soviet Union, which controlled East Germany, cutoff access to Berlin (the Berlin Blockade). The three Western powers responded with the Berlin airlift to sustain West Berlin. The Soviet Union gave up in its effort to starve West Berlin into submission, but the presence of West Berlin in the middle of East Germany remained a source of friction during the Cold War.

Do these historical and contemporary examples offer us insight into how the United States might fracture? And how might this fracturing come about? That is the topic for the next moon’s post.